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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839592">Dayenu</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait'>Stakebait</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Uncovered and other stories [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>White Collar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:21:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,930</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When it comes to what's enough, Neal and Peter seem to have switched sides</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke, Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Uncovered and other stories [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/611620</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. What If</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What if I get a beer belly?” Peter asked Neal as they lay sprawled, half-dressed, on Neal's bed in June's house. Outside, sheets of rain lashed the floor to ceiling windows. It was a good day to stay inside.</p>
<p>“Then I'll do this.” Neal kissed his way down Peter's taut abs and ran his tongue into Peter's navel.</p>
<p>“What if I go bald?”</p>
<p>Neal looked up at that. “Then maybe I'll finally convince you of the virtues of hats.” He caught one off the bedpost and put it on Peter's head, where it looked jaunty and ridiculous against his shirtless chest.</p>
<p>“I'm older than you,” Peter pursued, taking the hat off.</p>
<p>“Yes?” Neal said, in a tone which clearly implied “so?”</p>
<p>“I don't look like a male model,” Peter continued, gesturing at the shirt that hung open, framing Neal's washboard abs.</p>
<p>This time Neal's “so?” was more than just implied.</p>
<p>“So, you do,” Peter persisted. “You speak eight languages. You drink wine that's older than I am. You wear couture suits, even if they are second hand. Sooner or later you're going to wake up and realize you could be with some gorgeous glamorous guy—or girl—who can be with you all the time and doesn't always say no to your schemes.”</p>
<p>“You don't always say no,” Neal said, with a leer. When he failed to awaken an answering lecherous gleam, he sighed and sat up against the headboard. “Peter, I don't want another me. One is enough.”</p>
<p>“More than enough,” Peter muttered under his breath, out of habit.</p>
<p>“Good looks and charm—they're just tools, Peter. Sometimes, they're weapons. You could learn, if you cared enough. But you never will, and that's part of your charm. You and Elle are the only people I could count on, no matter what. And even Elle—if she knew everything I'd done, I don't know. You do. I trust you with my life. And you trust me with yours. If you think I'm going wake up one day and give that up because you don't know a Malbec from a Merlot, you're an idiot.”</p>
<p>“But you haven't given up trying to teach me,” Peter said gruffly, to cover his gratification.</p>
<p>Neal shrugged “It's a hobby.”</p>
<p>That was all well and good, but it didn't touch the part about someone who could put Neal first. Someone who could be with Neal for good, and not just on Tuesdays and whenever Elle had a business trip. </p>
<p>“I know you think Kate was the one, but you're still young,” Peter started over.</p>
<p>For the first time in a long time, Neal failed to meet Peter's eyes. “I was even younger then. I don't know if I believe in 'the one' any more. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a romantic.  Always will be. It's just... there's more than one way to love someone, and loving one person doesn't mean you can't love someone else too. I get that now.”</p>
<p>“After Sarah?” Peter tried not to make it a question, but it half came out as one anyway.</p>
<p>Neal didn't answer.</p>
<p>Peter hesitated, then said, “Neal, what Elizabeth and I have, I want that for you.” </p>
<p>Neal hesitated himself. “Thank you, Peter,” he said, at last. “But it's not gonna happen. I knew that when we started.” Started what, he didn't specify. </p>
<p>“Because of me,” Peter said flatly, and Neal shrugged. “Because of us, yeah. You're not in this alone, Agent Burke.”</p>
<p>“But if she really loves you—” Peter objected. “I mean, Elle's okay with it.”</p>
<p>“Peter, she's not <i>gonna</i> love me.”</p>
<p>Neal's fierce gesture cut off Peter's well-meant list of Neal's loveable qualities before it could get started.</p>
<p>“She's not gonna love me because she's <i>never gonna get that far</i>. Peter, you're not thinking—and that's not like you.” He got up and paced as he laid it out for Peter. “Imagine you're courting Elizabeth, now. You and I, we're already together.”</p>
<p>“That's different,” Peter objected, trying to pick his words carefully around the disloyal thought that if he and Neal had been the ones to be married already, he would never have looked at Elle. Well, not more than looked. Elizabeth was still beautiful, and Peter was not dead. </p>
<p>It wasn't, he told himself firmly, that Neal was—would have been—any more to him than Elle was. But Elle would never commit a crime, not a serious one. Not an <i>interesting</i> one. And so Peter, imaginary Peter who already had a partner, would never spend four years getting under her skin... and letting her get under his.</p>
<p>For once, Neal didn't see right through Peter's evasions and lay them wide open. Peter wasn't even sure Neal had noticed him tripping over his tongue, and that wasn't like Neal, either. </p>
<p>“Imagine I was already married to Kate,” Neal pressed on relentlessly with his own agenda, and to Peter's dismay, he almost could. The Kate that Fowler never found, the one who waited for Neal to get out of prison. </p>
<p>Maybe she was the one who suggested the anklet, so they could be together that much sooner. Maybe it was all meant as a long con, in the beginning, but when Neal got attached, again, she recognized the signs. </p>
<p>Maybe Kate went out of town sometimes on her own gray market business, and Peter learned not to ask questions, because if he pushed too hard he knew Neal would choose Kate every time. Maybe Peter learned to cherish those mysterious trips, when Neal could stay the night.</p>
<p>“Imagine you meet Elle on a case, just like you did,” Neal continued. “Imagine you ask her out. You have dinner a few times, you flirt—well, she flirts—you dance, you kiss her. Imagine she asks you back to her place. Now what, Peter? Do you tell her?”</p>
<p>That he was fucking his married partner, but that wasn't a problem, because his wife didn't mind? Yes, god help him, he probably did tell her. Because Peter never did have game, and didn't really want any. </p>
<p>And then, as he could envision all too clearly, Elizabeth-never-going-to-be-Burke would back away slowly, because the whole situation was weird and messy and off-putting, and Peter was cute in a stalkery way but she wanted someone who was available to make a commitment. He would turn into one of those single women war stories, half comedy set-piece and half cautionary tale, and he would never see her again. Peter pulled the blankets up to his waist. Without Neal in the bed, he was suddenly cold.</p>
<p>“You could not tell her. I mean, until later.” Peter, the supposed advocate for all things upright and honest, was not comfortable with having even said that sentence. But this was Neal, who had loved Kate for months before he even told her his real name.</p>
<p>Neal's smile went a little twisted. “Play it out, Peter.” </p>
<p>Okay. Let's say he doesn't ever lie to Elle, except by omission, because really, who would even think to ask that question, the convict you let out of prison, are you his piece on the side? Not sweet, straightforward Elizabeth, the girl he is falling in love with. The girl who is falling in love with him. The girl to whom, at last, he confesses, because he wants to make a life with her and that means there should be no more secrets between them. The girl who slaps his face and slams the door in it.</p>
<p>He must have winced.</p>
<p>“Didn't go over well, huh?” Asks Neal. Almost sympathetically. </p>
<p>“You could just...not tell her. At all.”</p>
<p>Neal shakes his head. “I've been a lot of things, Peter, but I've never been a cheater.”</p>
<p>“That's not what I meant,” Peter protested. “Just... break things off. With us. When you get serious,” he qualified, because if Neal dumped him every time he took some leggy art-fancier out for dinner, and came back every time it didn't go anywhere, Peter didn't think he could take it. “And then she'd never need to know.”</p>
<p>Now Neal's smile was so twisted you could barely call it a smile at all. “Two problems,” he said. He held up one finger. “I've always gone for the smart ones. If she sees us together—she'll know.”</p>
<p>“And the other one?” Peter asked, before he could stop himself.</p>
<p>“If I know going in that falling for her means losing you—Peter, how can I, if every time I look at her, all I see is you walking away?”</p>
<p>Peter felt that one right in the gut. He'd had some practice watching Neal walk away. Just the memory tightened his throat—and they hadn't even been together then. And one of those times he'd sent Neal away himself.</p>
<p>“I'm not gonna walk away,” Peter said. “I just want you to know. If you meet her. Or him. We'll still be—us. Partners. And friends. Even if this has to stop. We'll be okay.”</p>
<p>“Will you?” Neal asked.</p>
<p>“Of course,” Peter said immediately, and then, more honestly. “It might take a little while.”</p>
<p>Neal did not look happy. But Peter couldn't think of anything else to say. When he got home to Elle, he knew she would tell him where he'd gone wrong, but that wasn't much help right this second. Sometimes, swear to god, he wished he was wearing a wire, and Elle was outside in the van, ready to feed him his next line. Peter did not know how anyone handled having a... Neal, without also having a wife.</p>
<p>Except that was a cop out, because no one else did have a Neal, and that was the problem. And that part of Peter's hindbrain that growled every time Neal put his hand on the small of some skinny socialite’s back at an exhibit opening was just going to have to shut up.</p>
<p>In the old days, back a whole month and a half ago, he would have been lecturing that inner voice about fairness. After Elizabeth's miraculous Hail Mary play, though, Peter didn't have quite the same faith in fairness that he used to. Nothing about this was fair, after all, him having his cake and eating it too, and yet, it worked. For Elle too, she swore, and sweet, straightforward Elizabeth Burke was not the kind of person to lie about something like that. </p>
<p>The problem with this, with them, was not that it wasn't fair. It was that it didn't work  – not for Neal, not really. Oh, he <i>made</i> it work, with easy smiles, with practiced charm, with relentless patience. People who thought Caffrey had no impulse control didn't know him at all.</p>
<p>“You know what you told me, that one time,” said Neal suddenly.</p>
<p>Peter nodded, which was ridiculous, really, because it could be anything, he's told Caffrey hundreds of hours of random shit, on stakeouts, over case files and Chinese takeout, full immunity and terrible wine. But it's true, too, because Peter thinks he remembers everything he's ever told Caffrey—and everything Caffrey's ever told him. Mozzie's not the only one with perfect recall, not when it matters.</p>
<p>“‘I'm not supposed to. The amount of work I do equals certain things in the real world,’” Neal quoted. Peter remembered. Neal's very first day at June's, Peter's incredulous anger that Caffrey had once again thrown loaded dice at the universe and come up a winner. “So—maybe that's the answer. It's all <i>right</i>, Peter. I know you want to fix it, but—not everything has to be cappuccino in the clouds. It's enough. Lord knows, it's more than I ever expected.”</p>
<p>Peter realized his fist was crumpling the sheets, although who the hell he wanted to hit, he couldn't say. Neal, maybe, and that made no fucking sense at all. But enough-- enough was not enough, not for Neal. Enough was for Peter. Neal was—too big for enough. He was palaces and giant diamonds, fast talk and fast cars and big dreams of happily ever after with beautiful women who always came back—until they didn't.</p>
<p>And now Peter of all people had more than enough, so much more than he deserved, and Neal Caffrey was—just getting by. And, apparently, getting used to it.</p>
<p>“Peter,” said Neal, and the worst part was, his voice was gentle, like he was the one comforting Peter here. “Peter, you've spent four years trying to get me to grow up. This is a bad time to change your mind.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Four Letter Words</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So, what did I do wrong?” Peter asked Elizabeth plaintively. </p>
<p>She watched him in the mirror as she took off her makeup; he paced around the bedroom in his comfy flannel pajama bottoms and an old Quantico t-shirt.</p>
<p>“I don't think you did anything wrong, hon,” Elizabeth said supportively. “It's very sweet of you to want the best for Neal.”</p>
<p>“He wasn't happy about it,” Peter said.</p>
<p>Privately, Elizabeth sometimes wondered if Peter's famous detective skills came off with his pants.</p>
<p>“Neal might not have understood what you meant,” she suggested reasonably.</p>
<p>“What is there to misunderstand?” Peter was at sea.</p>
<p>“Well,” said Elizabeth, “You told him you wanted him to get together with somebody else. You told him you'd be okay if he didn't want to be with you any more. And you didn't ask if he would be. I think maybe what Neal heard was that being with him is not that important to you. And what Neal wanted to hear was that you wanted him to stay.”</p>
<p>Peter stared at her, open mouthed, and sat down on the edge of the bed abruptly.</p>
<p>“Of course I fucking want him to stay!” he exclaimed. “But I want him to be happy more.”</p>
<p>“Why?” Elizabeth had abandoned the mirror and was watching Peter's face intently.</p>
<p>“Because—he deserves better.”</p>
<p>Elizabeth sat down next to Peter, took his hand, and gently rubbed a small circle on the back.”You know I care about Neal, hon, but he's a convicted felon. Technically what he deserves is prison. Now he not only has freedom and a job, he has you. When he says you've given him more than he ever expected, he's not wrong.”</p>
<p>Peter made an impatient gesture with his free hand. “I know. It's not about that. It's just...I couldn't be happy knowing I was holding him back.”</p>
<p>“Even if he wanted you to?”</p>
<p>Peter nodded. “Even if he's pissed at me for it.”</p>
<p>“Why?” Elizabeth prodded again. “Neal's a grown man. He can make his own decisions. Why not let him make his own mistakes?”</p>
<p>“Because I love him too much to let him fuck up his life again—oh.”</p>
<p>Elizabeth laughed.</p>
<p>“Very sneaky, Mrs. Burke,” said Peter. “From now on, I am outsourcing all my interrogations to you.”</p>
<p>“I learned from the best,” said Elizabeth.</p>
<p>“You're not mad?”</p>
<p>“That you're in love with Neal? Honey, if I were mad about that, I'd have been seething for weeks. I know you just figured it out, but I kinda saw it coming.” From miles away, like a freight train, but Peter didn't need to hear that right now.</p>
<p>“That's not a no.”</p>
<p>Elizabeth leaned in to kiss him. “No, I'm not mad. Promise me you will always love me just a <i>tiny</i> bit more?”</p>
<p>“Forever and ever,” Peter vowed, kissing her passionately.</p>
<p>“Then we're good. Are you gonna tell him?”</p>
<p>“That I love you more?”</p>
<p>Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “I think you should tell him.”</p>
<p>“I don't know, Elle.” Peter pulled his hand away apologetically and got up to pace again. “It's not gonna fix anything. We'll still have to hide at work. I'll still be married...which is not a thing I would ever want to fix, because it is the best thing that ever happened to me...”</p>
<p>“Sssssh.” Elizabeth rose, her satin nightgown falling gracefully around her legs, and put a finger over Peter's mouth to stop the frantic babbling. </p>
<p>“I know what you mean. But I think you're wrong. It's not gonna change those things....but it might fix them anyway. If Neal knew that you loved him...that might be all he needs.”</p>
<p>“Or it might not,” Peter said skeptically.</p>
<p>“Or it might not,” Elizabeth agreed. “There are no guarantees. We both know couples who loved each other and still didn't make it. Neal and Kate, for one. But you don't just have love. You have—not trust. What's the word you used at that conference?” Elizabeth asked, knowing perfectly well.</p>
<p>“Faith,” Peter filled in.</p>
<p>Elizabeth nodded. “I know you don't like to talk about this much, but you don't have the safest job, and neither does Neal. If something ever happened to you, wouldn't you want him to know?”</p>
<p>Peter still hesitated. “Wouldn't you tell him?”</p>
<p>Elizabeth nodded. “I would, if I had to. But I think he should hear it from you, while you're both still around to make it count.”</p>
<p>–---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>Peter had changed his shirt three times and his tie twice.</p>
<p>“Hon, I haven't seen you this nervous since the day you proposed to me,” said Elizabeth.</p>
<p>Well, there was a minefield in a sentence. Peter started to babble something about how it was totally different, he's not proposing to Caffrey and she's much more terrifying—but in a good way—Elizabeth, blessedly, cut him off with a kiss.</p>
<p> “It's adorable.”</p>
<p>“I'm glad my gibbering terror amuses you.”</p>
<p>“What are you afraid of? It's not like my dad is waiting for you this time.”</p>
<p>“He would be if he found out about Neal!”</p>
<p>“One freakout at a time, honey,” Elizabeth said encouragingly.</p>
<p>Obediently, Peter returned to his original panic attack. “It's just—what if I screw everything up?”</p>
<p>“How would you do that, exactly?” Elizabeth used her “I'm walking you through the case file” voice, and Peter fell into the response pattern with the ease of long practice.</p>
<p>“Well, if—he doesn't feel the same way. And then he knows I do, and it's awkward, and he won't want to—to keep going, but we still have to see each other at work, and Jones will know there's something wrong, and—this is a bad idea.”</p>
<p>“It's my idea,” Elizabeth reminded him.</p>
<p>“I mean, it's a great idea,” Peter backpedaled rapidly. “I'm just not sure I can pull it off, that's all.”</p>
<p>“First of all,” said Elizabeth, “I don't believe there's anything you could say that would make Neal <i>not</i> want to have sex with you. We're buying condoms at Costco, Peter.”</p>
<p>This was.... possibly true, but Peter was not sure a future of fucking a man he couldn't look in the eye represented an improvement.</p>
<p>“And second of all?” he asked, transparently begging for reassurance. </p>
<p>Elizabeth put her arms around Peter's waist and pulled him in for a kiss. “Second of all, if Neal does not say it back, I will eat his hat.”</p>
<p>Elizabeth looked up into Peter's face with fierce determination—that any human being lucky enough to know Peter Burke could not help but love him, and that this time, she would finally convince him of that.</p>
<p>Peter smoothed back her hair tenderly. “Elle, it means the world to me that you think nobody can resist my charms. But—”</p>
<p>“You won the auction,” Elizabeth reminded him.</p>
<p>“Thanks to your expert coaching,” Peter said fondly.</p>
<p>“There was that crooked doctor lady, Mr. Magic Hands,” Elizabeth continued. Peter held his hands up guiltily.</p>
<p>“And there's me,” Elizabeth said, poking Peter firmly in the sternum to emphasize her point. “I know you think I'm biased, but how do you think I got that way?”</p>
<p>Peter kissed her, still not convinced, but unwilling to argue any more.</p>
<p>“Besides,” Elizabeth added her clincher, “I have a confidential informant.”</p>
<p>“Mozzie?” Peter asked. If that were true, he would take back every impatient curse he's ever muttered over his wife's inexplicable fondness for the little paranoid.</p>
<p>“Better,” Elizabeth assured him.</p>
<p>“Neal?!?”</p>
<p>Elizabeth looked startled by his vehemence. She was expecting relief, not...this. </p>
<p>“Neal told you he loved me? But he didn't tell me?”</p>
<p>Peter didn't look gratified. He looked pissed off. At her or Neal, Elizabeth couldn't tell, and she wasn't sure Peter could either.</p>
<p>“I told him,” she corrected.</p>
<p>Now Peter looked less pissed and more confused. “You told him he loved me?”</p>
<p>“I told him I knew, and that it was okay.”</p>
<p>“When was this?” Peter demanded. He cast his mind back, but couldn't recall Neal and Elizabeth even being alone for more than a few minutes in weeks....</p>
<p>“The first night,” he realized. “The very first night. When Neal ran. You've known all this time, and you never told me.”</p>
<p>Elizabeth had nothing to apologize for. She lifted her chin. “Peter Burke, I'm your wife and I love you, and I am Neal's friend, but I am not a tin can telephone for you two to pass messages through, and I'm not your couple's therapist. If you want to know what Neal thinks, ask him. You already know what I think. As a very wise man once said, cowboy up.”</p>
<p>And on that excellent exit line, she left the room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Getting the Message</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a knock at the door of Neal Caffrey's penthouse apartment. Neal opened the door and then stood stock still in the doorway, staring. It wasn't just that he wasn't expecting Peter, although he wasn't—it wasn't Tuesday, and Elizabeth was not away. It was that this was the first time he'd ever actually seen Peter in the bespoke suit he'd bartered for that had caused so much trouble. </p><p>“You look... perfect,” Neal told him. No other word would do. </p><p>Peter smiled fondly. “So do you.” </p><p>Neal glanced down at himself and blushed. He hadn't been expecting company at all, so he was wearing the gym clothes Peter kept at his place—faded, even frayed in one or two places, and ludicrously big on Neal to boot. “They smell like you,” he explained.</p><p>“I like you in my things,” Peter said, and then he was in the apartment. He kicked the door closed behind him and crushed Neal into an embrace—crumpling his pristine tailoring in the process, but Neal couldn't bring himself to object. Considering how much the damned thing cost, it had better be able to stand up to a little foreplay.</p><p>Peter kissed Neal... and kissed Neal... and kissed Neal. Their tongues tangled, they nibbled on each other's lower lips, they moaned into each other's mouths. Neal was starting to feel like all his nerve endings had migrated to his mouth. Peter had cupped his jaw and showed, unusually, no signs of wandering hands. Neal's own hands were gripping Peter's shoulders, usually his own private feast—and Elizabeth's, of course—but now revealed to all the world through the miracle of fine tailoring.</p><p>After several minutes, Neal started to feel like he was back in high school, playing three minutes in the closet. It was not that he was tired of kissing Peter—he was never tired of kissing Peter—he just felt like he was missing something.</p><p>“Peter?” He finally broke away long enough to ask, “did you just come over to prove you can be even more stunning, and kiss me?”</p><p>“What if I did?” </p><p>Normally Neal hated when Peter answered a question with a question, but right now the treacherous melting feeling in his chest even found that adorable. “Then—okay,” he answered, and shrugged. Neal didn't really need to understand. There was nothing he had planned for tonight—or any other night—that was better than this. </p><p>Peter pulled him in for one more scorching kiss and then reluctantly let go.</p><p>“I didn't,” he admitted. “I came to tell you something. But you looked at me like that and I got distracted.” </p><p>“Like what?” Neal asked, curious. He knew what he was feeling, but he had no idea how it showed on his face.</p><p>“Like art,” said Peter, which was pretty much it, exactly. </p><p>Belatedly, Neal realized he was being a terrible host. “Beer?” he asked. “Did you eat?”</p><p>“Yes—no—” Peter got his answers out of order and stopped. “Thanks. Maybe later. For now...can you just come sit with me?”</p><p>“Of course.” Neal led the way to the couch. That sounded faintly ominous, except that even Peter would not be clueless enough to get all dressed up and make out with Neal as a prelude to breaking up with him. Would he?</p><p>Peter took a deep breath. “Elizabeth thinks I said it wrong,” he said.</p><p>“Said what wrong?” Neal asked, perplexed. If Elizabeth thought so, she was probably right, but that didn't mean Neal knew what she was talking about.</p><p>“About you—and other people.”</p><p>Neal winced. “Do we have to talk about this again? Can we just leave it that I know I have your permission and go back to the kissing part?”</p><p>“You don't need my permission,” Peter protested, and then stopped short at the expression on Neal's face, which was more hurt—for the second before it went determinedly neutral—than anything else.</p><p>“Wait. I'm doing it again. Let me start over.” he took Neal's hand and interlaced their fingers. “Please.”</p><p>“I'm listening,” Neal said, trying not to let his tensed muscles show.</p><p>“What I'm trying to say is—you make me so happy I don't believe it's real sometimes. And I want you to stay with me until I'm chasing you around in a wheelchair and you can't remember where you hid the loot.”</p><p>Neal looked up, startled, from where he'd been tracing slow circles on the back of Peter's hand. </p><p>“But what I want even more is for you to be as happy as you make me. Even if that means giving you up. Because I love you.”</p><p>After a subjective eternity of silence—at least half a minute—“Elizabeth was right,” Neal informed Peter.</p><p>Peter laughed. “She usually is.”</p><p>“And if you think giving me up is going to make me happy, you are an idiot.”</p><p>“I usually am,” Peter admitted.</p><p>“I love you too,” Neal concluded. “ As for other people, we will burn that bridge when we come to it. But,” he held up a warning hand, “I will <i>never</i> forget where the treasure is.”</p><p>Peter chuckled. “Oh,” he said, reminded. “Elizabeth said I should ask you about a horse? Do I want to know?”</p><p>“I'm not Catherine the Great!” Neal protested indignantly.</p><p>Peter looked confused. Neal laughed. “Never mind. That, you really don't want to know. Elizabeth means—I told her—when I knew I was in love with you. That time, when we ran the seven man con—”</p><p>“I remember,” Peter said.</p><p>“I was so fucking proud of you I thought my chest would explode,” Neal admitted. </p><p>“Also you like seeing me straddle things and hold leather straps?”</p><p> “It didn't hurt,” Neal admitted.</p><p>“I'll keep that in mind,” said Peter. Idly, Neal wondered if he'd just let himself in for horseback riding lessons or something altogether kinkier—or both. He looked forward to finding out.</p><p>“Elizabeth knew first, of course,” Neal added.</p><p>“She always does,” Peter commiserated. “When did she....?”</p><p>“The oxygen,” Neal said briefly.</p><p>“That early? I wonder...”</p><p>“What?” Neal asked curiously. </p><p>“I wonder how long she's known that I'm in love with you.”</p><p>That, Neal thought, was a very good question. “That woman,” he said with feeling, “has one hell of a poker face.”</p><p>“Aren't you going to ask?” Peter said.</p><p>“Ask Elizabeth?” Neal said, confused. “I figured you would, when you go home.”</p><p>“Ask me. When I knew.”</p><p>Neal was startled. “It has to be sometime after I kissed you. If you'd been thinking about me that way before, there's no way I would not have noticed.”</p><p>Peter shook his head. “Not exactly. I did it backwards. I never thought about the sex part until you kissed me. But I knew I loved you for a long time before that. I was just kidding myself about how.”</p><p>“All right,” Neal said obediently, “When?”</p><p>“Since you gave up Kate's ring for me.”</p><p>“I had to save your life, Peter!”</p><p>“Not that. Afterwards. When you could have taken it back, with no consequences. And you didn't.”</p><p>Neal shrugged uncomfortably. “Don't make me out to be a better man than I am, Peter. I didn't give it back because it was the right thing to do. I did it to make you smile.”</p><p>“I know,” Peter said.</p><p>Neal smiled. “Okay. Now that we've proven we're both total saps, and also that I should have kissed you years ago, now do you want a beer?”</p><p>“You trying to get me drunk, Caffrey?”</p><p>“Nah,” Neal said. “It's worse than that. And it's all your fault, too.”</p><p>“What did I do now?”</p><p>“Pavlovian conditioning. I don't even like beer. And now every time I taste it on your lips, I get hard.”</p><p>Peter laughed. His phone buzzed, and he glanced at it, with an apologetic look at Neal. Neal waved off the apology—anyone who worked for the FBI was conditioned to that, too, himself included.</p><p>Peter grinned and held up the screen to show Neal the text. It was from Elizabeth. “I told you so. Don't even think about coming home tonight.”</p><p>“In that case,” said Peter, “yeah, I'll take a beer. And then I'm gonna get you naked.”</p><p>“Just me?”</p><p>“Yep,” Peter nodded. “Just you. Because you want me to fuck you while I'm wearing the suit.”</p><p>Neal's eyes went dark and his sudden erection tented the front of his borrowed sweatpants. </p><p>“On second thought,” said Peter,”skip the beer.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As always, thanks to dotfic for the beta read.</p><p>It has been a very long time and I suddenly realized I had never posted the last three parts I wrote, so here they are. I'm torn about whether to mark this series as complete. I do have quite a bit more plotted out in my head, and a few snippets of it written in no kind of order, but I've obviously wandered away at this point and it seems unlikely, if not impossible, that I will ever wander back. For now, at least, I'm leaving it open, but if there are no parts after this one, you can safely assume they lived happily ever after.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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